Abstract
It has been long claimed in the historical literature that Czechoslovak sociology in the interwar and immediately post-WWII period was influenced by Dimitrie Gusti's monographic school, but little evidence has been presented. This paper explores Czechoslovak books and journals from the period 1925-1950 with the objective of specifying the nature and chronology of this influence.
It concludes that the reception of the Bucharest School in Czechoslovak sociology was superficial and inhibited by the lack of direct engagement with publications by Romanian sociologists. The reception was further inhibited by a bias in favour of American rural sociology.
Czechoslovak sociological journals published only two articles and 18 reviews and short reports on Romanian sociology in 1925-1950. The Bucharest School's influence reached its peak in the years 1937-1947 with Anton Štefánek's Principles of Sociography of Slovakia (1944) being the most important work to acknowledge a direct debt to Gusti and his collaborators.
The political circumstances in which the short-lived revival of Czechoslovak sociology after WWII took place were not favourable for the continued interest in the theories and methods of the Bucharest School.